She spent much of her childhood in Ireland, particularly near Craughwell, County Galway, and England, where she attended Holland Park School.[2] In the late 1960s, she began taking a few small roles in her father's movies. She started very small indeed, substituting her hands for Deborah Kerr's in the British Casino Royale and advanced to bigger roles in 1969, starring, for example, in A Walk with Love and Death, where she played the 16-year-old French noblewoman Claudia. In the same year, her mother, who was 39 years old, died in a car accident, and Anjelica relocated to the U.S., where she modeled for several years. While she modeled, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson.[3]

Huston has an older brother, Tony, a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called "Legs", a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston, and an adopted older brother, Pablo. She is the aunt of Boardwalk Empire actor Jack Huston.[4]

Anjelica Huston with her brother Danny Huston at the 62nd Annual Academy Awards in 1990

Deciding to focus more on movies, in the early 1980s she studied acting. Her first notable role was in Bob Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Later, her father cast her as Maerose, daughter of a Mafia don whose love is scorned by a hit man (Jack Nicholson) in the film adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia-satire novel Prizzi's Honor (1985). Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, making her the first person in Academy Award history to win an Oscar when a parent and a grandparent had also won one.

Huston earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a con artist in Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990). She also starred as the lead in her father's final directorial film, The Dead (1987), an adaptation of a James Joyce story.

In December 2012, Huston recorded a public service announcement for PETA, urging her colleagues in Hollywood to refrain from using great apes in television, movies and advertisements.[7] Later, the animal rights organization named her their Person of the Year 2012.[8]

Huston began dating photographer Bob Richardson in 1969 when she was 18 and he was 41; their relationship lasted almost four years.[9]

Huston lived with actor Jack Nicholson, on and off, from 1973 until 1990.[10] During one of their separations, in the late 1970s, she was involved in a relationship with Ryan O'Neal.

On May 23, 1992, Huston married sculptor Robert Graham. The couple lived in a five-story house designed by Graham at 69 Windward Avenue in Venice, California, until his death on December 27, 2008. They did not have any children.

Huston's home went on the market for $18 million in 2010, but initially failed to sell. In September 2012, the New York Post reported that Huston was planning to transform her house into a private social club;[11] the actress was said to have accepted $12 million for the property and to serve on the advisory board for a new private club to be based there.[12] In April 2014, Huston sold the house for $11.15 million.[13]

Huston was close friends with actor Gregory Peck, whom her father directed in Moby Dick (1956). The two of them first met on the set of the film when she was four years old as Peck was in costume as Captain Ahab. Decades later, after her father's death, Huston reunited with Peck and maintained a friendship that lasted until his death.[14][15]

Huston wrote her memoirs as one 900-page book; she split it into two books at her publisher's urging.[16]